The cost to tool 3 molds (or more) for 3 figures like they did with the AOTC 3-packs though would actually run the company more.

Can't they just pop new heads onto the previously molded bodies?

So long as the armor's identical between the two... Should work fine then I'd think. That'd be a good possibility for future sets I'd think actually. Perhaps the C1 Clonetrooper's helmet would fit the 3-pack Clone's body already even....

All comes down to money. Star Wars is a fan driven property and as much as we'd like to think that one Super articulated clone at the beginning of the AOTC period would have made them a fortune and saved them sculpting prices, the fact is that many collectors will buy and troop build every single pose, paint and head variation they come out with. Let's not forget that a five point articulated figure is only six parts to cast as opposed to 15 part articulation, get the picture.

If you could have bought a thousand super articulated clones when AOTC came out, then all you'd need to do is buy a few of the new ones, but instead everyone went out and bought each new wave hoping they'd be better than the next and Hasbro just watched the money roll in because what if they didn't make a better one next time and who wants to pay Ebay troop building costs if they missed out at retail.

I don't see SW figures slow movement into articulation as the company finally realizing it's the way to go. I see it as a plan that they have had for years now and if you ask me they're probably sitting pretty and smiling all the way to the bank.

Yeah, I agree this is a plan they have probably had for a while... why make a figure great right off the bat, when you can sell several slighty inferior versions that keep getting just a bit better and better?

My main rant though is the lack of army-builders in the assortments... when I go to TRU, Walmart, etc, 99% of the stuff sitting there are core characters it seems... Anakin, Obi Wan, Yoda... the Clones fly off the pegs. The assortments should include about 50% army builders...

Actually, just picking up a 3-pack Clone I have nearby, it's 7 separate pices (I think they all vary though), which means 3 - 4 separate sculpts requires about (since the pieces do vary) 21 - 28 molds... more or less, there's definitely multiple molds for the same sculpt, etc., but that's simplified for the sake of conversation...

With mold toolings being the highest fixed cost in a figure's development, I think these variances in numbers are important. That's thousands of dollars difference between doing 3 - 4 pre-posed sculpts compared to one sculpt with many points of articulation... That's not to say that there's not profit being made on both though of course, just really semantics that the reality is that the 3 - 4 pre-posed figures did cost more to produce than a single SA styled body.

Whether Hasbro intended these variants and all with the thought of profit in mind, I think profit's always their motivator but I don't think people would've NOT bought a SA 3-pack over a pre-posed 3-pack, and potentially they could've made a scant bit more per unit had they gone the SA 3-pack route in the first place. Not sure what their motivation is to go either way though because I don't see them making LESS if they'd gone the other way than they did.

I think articulation, since it is an added cost, is indeed something they've been slowly forced into. It's a competitive issue in the toy industry in general where one company's outdoing the other... It's rampant in the 1:6 market which has seen revolutional leaps made by one company's attempt to outdo another, right down to the patenting of some of the innovations being made by some of their creators. I think Star Wars has moved the level of articulation in an effort to be more competitive on the shelf to comparable toy lines... Whether that's the case or not though, who knows, but it's definitely been a gradual thing that Hasbro's been questioned on and seemingly reacted to. I guess I maybe don't give them enough credit for being "devious" enough to plot out an articulation scheme that, for all intents and purposes, doesn't benefit them all that much to play it out to its supposed end.